Late on Wednesday, the EU Parliament and Member States' representatives on the Council reached a provisional agreement on controversial plans that would allow individual states to ban cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops on their territories – even if the crops have been licensed by the EU as a whole.

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Under the new rules, once the EU Commission's advisors have assessed a variety of GM crop as safe for cultivation, it can be grown anywhere in the EU, but states wishing to prevent cultivation will be allowed to opt out. Currently eight of the 28 member states have banned cultivation of GM crops, though the legality of these measures has been challenged by EU authorities and agribusinesses.

On Thursday, EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said the move was in line with EU President Jean Claude Juncker's commitment to accord the same weight to the desires of member state governments and their citizens as to scientific advice on food and environment issues.

The Health Commissioner continued, "The agreement, if confirmed, would meet Member States' consistent calls since 2009, to have the final say on whether or not GMOs can be cultivated on their territory, in order to better take into account their national context and, above all, the views of their citizens."

The new rules still need the approval of the full Parliament before they are accepted, but the Health Commissioner said he is confident that a formal agreement will be reached in the coming weeks, and that the new rules will be in effect by spring 2015.

Reacting to the decision, Bart Staes, food safety spokesperson for the European Greens said, "This deal… leaves too many gaps, which could undermine the hand of those wanting to say 'no' to GMOs. Shifting to a 'renationalisation' of decisions on GMO cultivation must be accompanied by a totally legally watertight basis for those countries wishing to opt out, otherwise it risks being a Trojan horse. More importantly, [the deal] fails to really change the fundamentally flawed EU approval process in itself."

However, Staes did acknowledge that, "While the overall thrust goes in the wrong direction, the worst has been avoided and some of the major problematic provisions originally demanded by EU governments have been improved in the final agreement.

"Importantly, countries wanting to opt-out of GMO authorisations will not be forced to first ask [GM seed] companies not to include them in their authorisation applications but have the option to do so if they want."

Even so, the food safety spokesperson's analysis of the agreement differed somewhat from Commissioner Andriukaitis'. Staes concluded that, though the deal might initially strengthen the hand of member states wishing to opt out of the GM agriculture package, "it is not clear if this will provide true legal certainty." He went on, "There is definitely a need to reform the EU's GMO authorisation process: we cannot persist with the current situation by which authorisations proceed in spite of flawed risk assessments and the consistent opposition of a majority of EU member states in Council and, importantly, a clear majority of EU citizens."

Beat Späth from Europabio, which represents GM crop companies, said the agreement would "Undermine Innovation and the Single Market" and claimed it "Enables Member States to formally reject safe products which are approved at European level." Späth added that the move "sends a negative signal for innovative industries worldwide considering whether or not to invest and operate in Europe."

Environment group Greenpeace agreed with Staes that the text "delivers less than it promises." Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU agriculture policy director, commented, "Environment ministers say they want to give countries the right to ban GM crop cultivation on their territory, but the text they have agreed does not give governments a legally solid right. It ties their hands by not allowing [them] to use evidence of environmental harm to ban GM cultivation. This leaves those countries that want to say ‘no’ to GM crops exposed to legal attacks by the biotech industry."